ACD systems distribute calls incoming to a call center for handling to any suitable ones of available call-handling agents according to some predefined criteria. In advanced modern-day ACD systems, suitability of an agent to handle a call is determined by matching skills that are needed to handle a particular call against the skills possessed by the agents who are available to handle that call. An illustrative such system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,206,903.
It often happens that the call center becomes overloaded by calls, so that no suitable agents are available to handle the calls at the moment that the calls come in. The calls then back up, and are placed in call queues based upon some predefined criteria, such as the skills that are needed to handle them. There they await suitable agents becoming free and available to handle them. When the ACD system detects that an agent has become available to handle a call, the ACD system delivers to the agent the highest-priority oldest-waiting call that matches the agent's highest skill. Generally the only condition that results in a call not being delivered to an available agent is that there are no calls waiting to be handled that require any of the available agent's skills. The available agents are then placed in agent queues based upon some predefined criteria, such as the skills which they possess. There they await the arrival of suitable calls for handling. When a call arrives, the ACD system delivers the call to the longest-waiting agent whose skills best match the call's requirements. Call center efficiency typically requires that both calls and agents spend as little time in queues as possible.
As call volumes of calls requiring different skills change, agents may need to be reassigned to different skills (i.e., to handling calls requiring different ones of the skills possessed by the agents) to balance the call load. The task of monitoring service levels, determining which skills each agent should be logged into at any given time, and moving the agents between skills to maintain optimal staffing is complex, time-consuming, laborious, and slow. This function is normally carried out manually by the call center supervisor. Consequently, the supervisor must almost constantly monitor the performance of the call center and adjust agent assignments as call volumes change. Even then, the supervisor's reactions to changes in the call center's workload are often either delayed if properly computed or inaccurate if done reflexively, based only on experience and without computation, to avoid delay. Moreover, the call center supervisors are normally the most experienced employees and the call center's most valuable resource, whose time could be better spent on other call center work.